


From the Shadows of the Dark Unknown

by Kalamos



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Alcohol, Drugs, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-06
Updated: 2015-08-06
Packaged: 2018-04-13 06:47:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,208
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4511985
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kalamos/pseuds/Kalamos
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Gansey had said once that Joseph Kavinsky didn't matter. He had been wrong, because Joseph Kavinsky did matter. He mattered so much that Ronan couldn't stop dreaming about him. – What Ronan didn't understand was that while Joseph Kavinsky was dangerous, a Joseph Kavinsky this angry was a time bomb. There was no way he would let Ronan - of all people - dream him back to life. And god, he would make him sorry.</p>
            </blockquote>





	From the Shadows of the Dark Unknown

**Author's Note:**

> Title taken from a song named "Whore" by In This Moment (it's actually really good) (you should listen to it).

1.

The light turned from yellow to red as he slowed down the car. Any minute now the Mitsubishi would pull up, full stop beside the driver's side window, that boy looking at him with his sunglassed eyes and a smile like murder.

There was no Mitsubishi, of course, but everything else was the same: Gansey beside him, the asphalt all dark promise and glowing center lines, the way the town ducked itself into the night. It smelled like autumn. Ronan was tired, the kind of tired that never let you sleep, and in his mind he relived the days before Kavinsky's death a thousand times. Drunk in the forest with those slender fingers on his back. What would have happened? It was not like Ronan wasn't used to losing people, but there was never one he’d wanted like that: push him up against the wall, kiss like it was a war, dig nails into skin so they'd leave scars like terrifying love bites.

He needed someone who was not afraid of him. Someone who wouldn't tiptoe around him, who wasn't afraid to hurt him. Someone who, when Ronan felt like an invincible god, would laugh into his face.

"Green", Gansey announced, raising an eyebrow at him.

"Your mom," Ronan muttered. Gansey dignifiedly ignored it. Ronan hit the gas pedal and forced his attention back on the road.

Back in Monmouth Manufacturing, Ronan collapsed into his bed, only to lie awake until he finally fell asleep some time the next morning. Gansey was banging at his door, wanting to go somewhere Glendower-related with him and Adam and Noah and Blue, but Ronan didn’t answer. His bones ached with sadness choked down and he longed for the oblivion of beer-induced sleep.

He had nightmares of course, which wasn’t very surprising. He was running through a forest. Behind him he could hear the screeching of the creatures, slowly coming closer, and closer, until he abruptly came to a halt as he approached the edge of a cliff. A thousand feet beneath him, Henrietta was fast asleep under a dark red sunrise. He turned around as the night horrors caught up, two of them, their beaks aiming for his heart, with their claws digging deep into his arms. He was staggering, the precipice right behind him. The pain felt absurdly real and he was thinking _oh god, not again_ , when suddenly there was Kavinsky, moving calmly and shooting bullets, and the night horrors fell down like stones. But Kavinsky didn’t stop, he was shoving the gun back into his jeans and walking straight into him, bodies crushing and they were both falling down, down, down towards blood red Henrietta. Kavinsky grabbed his arm and said, _it's better on the other side_. And then, one heartbeat before they crashed to the ground, Ronan woke up.

It was those seconds when he couldn’t move, was just sort of floating, watching himself from above, and his mind couldn’t yet grasp what was wrong with the picture, when suddenly he was in his own body again. At first he only groaned in pain because his arms were actually bleeding, then he felt the warmth of a body beside him. And he knew - knew before he looked, he closed his eyes for just another moment, then turned his head.

_Kavinsky._

There was a long list of situations that called for secret-stash vodka and illegal drugs, and this one was on the very top of it.

At least he didn't bring the night horrors with him.

Kavinsky opened his eyes slowly, looked at him, looked at the room, looked at chainsaw screeching from the top of the silent stereo - then recognition spread over his face and he began to laugh. That terrible, careless, ignorant, endlessly haunting Kavinsky laugh, and something in Ronan tightened and _hurt_.

"You actually did it", Kavinsky said. Ronan didn’t reply. Instead he sat up, reached under the bed for his emergency bottle of vodka, unscrewed it and took a good sip before passing it to Kavinsky. He didn’t often permit himself feelings beside anger, but now they were everywhere, all at once, and he couldn’t do anything about them. Alcohol was for smoothing the jagged edges of self-hatred, for easing the burning, hollow sadness, and for drowning that relentless _wanting_ \- but most of all, it was to keep down the panic that lingered deep down in his stomach.

 

2.

Most people didn't know what to do in the face of calamity.

Joseph Kavinsky didn't know what to do in the face of beauty.

Ruin was an instinct. There were insults to be traded, fires to be set, blood to be spilled: because beauty was fleeting and it would be too much torment to know he had simply let it exist at all.

Ronan Lynch was a being of beauty, and the fact that Joseph was going to ruin him gave him a peculiar satisfaction. It would make him better, the way bruised knees and broken hands were better than having no tale to tell at all.

They were at that absurd philosophical thoughts stage of drunk. At least, Lynch was.

"Hey, Lynch!” Joseph picked up the bottle of vodka. „If I hit the door, will you blow me?" He threw, not waiting for an answer. Magnificently, the bottle described a high arch above the length of the room and splintered just above the doorknob.

Lynch downed another beer and aimed the empty bottle for the laundry basket that Dick Gansey had obviously left for the cleaning lady.

"I will blow your face, asshole." Lynch's right fist made an effort to plant a hook at Joseph's chin, but he missed, grabbed at his hair instead and drew him in, close.

Lynch's breath smelled like beer and sleep and dark wanting. His eyes didn't betray anything of what was going on in his head. After a moment, Joseph drew back. "Try harder."

With that, he freed himself and went for the fridge in the bathroom where, he assumed, more beer was stored.

"Please tell me there is more than alcohol in this wannabe loft." He set down another sixpack. Lynch shrugged.

"I could tell you. That won't make it true." He was starting to slur. If they were going to have any fun, he'd need something else than beer and vodka.

"Aww, man." Joseph wandered through the room, idly tipping book piles over with his toes - not that he actually thought Dick Gansey would hide cocaine between _The Encyclopedia of Virginia History_ and _Animals in Welsh Folklore_ , but there was something about the way they clearly had been handled and stacked with care that bothered him. "So Dick III is one of those boring straight edge guys, huh? Didn't figure that'd be your type."

Lynch didn't dignify this with an answer. He just looked at him - that special Lynch look, measured out to tug at your ego and make you feel small and worthless. But there was something hungry in it too. Joseph smirked. He'd let him wait - wait until Lynch begged him on his knees, and then he'd crush his sorry little ego with a flick of his finger.

This was good.

"Come on, sweetheart. Let's find us some snow."

 

3.

"I’m rather impressed, actually," Kavinsky said conversationally as they headed for the BMW.

"You didn't get it right, exactly, but I suppose it'll do." He let out a dirty laugh.

Ronan felt he was slowly approaching the level of drunkenness appropriate for the situation. Kavinsky outside of Monmouth Manufacturing was at once better and worse.

Better, because that boy just wouldn't stop moving, all restless limbs and imposing disorder - he hadn't been able to keep him from trashing Gansey's mint plant, but at least Kavinsky had left the Henrietta model intact.

Worse, because dreams on the loose were generally not a good thing.

Even more so because Ronan still didn't know if dream Kavinsky remembered how they had ended. _It was never going to be you and me._ Saying it had been strangely satisfying. But there had been a tiny part of him that had been hoping that, despite everything, maybe they'd _be_ something, someday - and right then, it had hurt an awful lot for being such a small thing. He had no doubt that it was this tiny part that had brought this despicable creature back to life.

Wanting surged again. He kicked the side of the car when the door wouldn't open at first try.

"Give that to me," Kavinsky said, snatching the keys from his wobbly hands. "You’re not gonna drive like that."

"Sure I am. It’s not like dying's something you've never done before."

"Man, no need to become tactless. Where’s your upper class education?" He flashed a vile grin. "Oh wait. You didn't have one. Pity. Get in the car, loser."

And Ronan did. Passenger seat. A strange place to be in his own car.

In one swift movement, Kavinsky slid into the driver's seat, leaned over and opened the glove box.

"Hey hey hey," he said appraisingly. "This is a nice collection you have here." He took out a pair of sunglasses - white-rimmed, tinted glasses the right shade of dark - and two tiny plastic bags, the smaller one containing white powder, the other a handful of green pills. Ronan felt his face burning, gritted his teeth, knuckles white.

"Man," Kavinsky said, then moved closer and whispered into his ear, "don’t you think I know? I came from inside your head. How about you dreamed yourself some brain cells for a change? So you have more of them to kill off with beer and weed."

"What do you know?" This was a dangerous question and yet he had to know.

Kavinsky smiled. All-teeth. "I know why you said those things about me. We’re alike, you and I, even though your precious Dick Gansey tries to tell you otherwise." His hand stroked Ronan’s neck. "You remember 4th of July? Matthew? You made me beg, man."

How desperate someone had to be, taking what you loved most just so you'd show up at his party.

"I’m going to make you desperate, Lynch."

How blind he'd been, fearing rejection when Kavinsky had made himself open for him.

"I’m going to make you beg."

 

4.

Lynch left the car, slamming the door. Joseph took his time, donning the sunglasses to see if they were the right kind - they were - and doing a line of coke from the dashboard, even though the drug wouldn’t have any effect on him. Because he was a fucking dream and Lynch didn’t get him right.

When he got out as well, Lynch was almost done taking out his anger on something that looked like it might have been a ramp.

"There, there. How about you concentrate your energy on something else?" Joseph held up the small bag containing the cocaine. "Like making this work for me. You didn't put a lot of effort into reviving me."

For an answer, Lynch slammed his fist into Joseph's face. It felt good. _Alive_. He had this theory that punching someone was better than not touching them at all.

"Surely you can do better than that," he teased, wiping blood from his nose.

"I will fucking kill you."

"Don’t bother. You already did."

Lynch lunged a second time, but Joseph moved to the left, spinning him around, shoving the other boy's body onto the BMW's hood with a pleasant sounding _thud_. Lynch was definitely drunk, otherwise he wouldn't have been able to do this. Joseph leaned over him, pinning his arms to the windshield, his own body pressing the other boy's down.

"I want you to fight," he whispered, his voice low and terrible. "I want you to tell me you don't want me, you don't need me. Then I’ll leave. Man, I’m going to blow my head up somewhere in the woods, so you don't have to. Come on. Tell me."

Lynch’s chest was heaving - maybe it was anger, maybe it was wanting. Maybe Joseph didn’t care. And there was no answer, because of course Lynch didn’t do lies.

Underneath vodka and coke and desire to destroy, there was something raw in Joseph, bloodless and screaming.

“You shithead with your dumb friends and your trailer boy crush and your glorious future. It wouldn’t have cost you anything to, I don’t know, maybe answer my texts or spare me a minute of your fucking time instead of what-fucking-ever it is you do with Dick Gansey. Don’t you dare try and dream me back. You blew your fucking chance.”

Lynch was suddenly very still, and there was something wild in his eyes. “I fucking know, man.” Pause. Then again, more softly, “I know.”

"Say it," Joseph instructed calmly, his mouth almost touching Lynch's neck.

Lynch turned his head. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I ruined it.”

“Beg me.”

And Lynch closed his eyes, his voice barely more than a breath. “Will you please forgive me?”

 

Joseph started to laugh then, loud and terrible, and leaned back. "No fucking way, man."

There was the gun in his hand, easy like that, the dream gun he’d used on the night horrors. And then, aiming for his own head (his throat, actually), he pulled the trigger.


End file.
